Gerry LaFemina Archives

Posted on February 14, 2026February 14, 2026 by kpdavis

Mad Barnstorming

Gerry LaFemina, Michael Simms, Kerry Neville in script on a forest green background. Beneath each name is a picture of that person. LaFemina has a cheeky grin and peers over wire rimmed glasses. Simms wears a cowboy had and a white beard, and Neville cuts a side-eye at the audience. She is lovely with shoulder-length dark hair

Madville’s first in-person writing workshop

June 25-28, 2026
Spatterdock Guesthouses
Uncertain, Texas

We chose the name “Mad Barnstorming” for our writing workshop for several reasons. Mad is part of our name, and we are kind of mad (as in crazy) to do what we do at all. Kerry Neville (faculty member) has a memoir out with Mad in the title (Momma May Be Mad.) But most of all, the largest cottage at Spatterdock, where we will be staying and conducting the workshops is named “Barnstormer Cottage.” That will be our home for three days.

Uncertain, Texas? Is that really the name of a town?

Yes. Uncertain, Texas, is a place that spawns stories. We don’t want anyone to misunderstand where we’re going. And we loved this documentary film that was made about the place in 2015. Here is the trailer to give you a flavor of the place. (The full-length documentary is available to rent from Amazon Prime, and while you’re there, look for Bernie starring Jack Black and Shirley McClean. If you love dialect the way we do, that film will make you happy. It was shot near Uncertain, and the locals they recorded as research were better than any actor they could have hired, so they used those original interview reels. It’s brilliantly done.) The guest houses where we will be staying are nestled within giant cedar trees, right on the water, but it is a gentile neighborhood. There are quirky art cars parked around the place in purpose-built carports. It’s a place where artists come to relax. We’ll be right at home.

We are trying to share a place unlike any other. It is unspoiled. Getting there isn’t as difficult as you might think.

Our faculty are amazing! You have heard us talk about them before. They are Gerry LaFemina, Michael Simms, and Kerry Neville. All are multi-genre authors who also teach creative writing at the university level.

The location is rustic, atmospheric, awe-inspiring. We’ve booked all the space at Spatterdock guesthouses, but we hope also to attract more writers than that, either from the local area, or from elsewhere. There are quite a few guesthouses and cabins in the area. We will also be near Jefferson, Texas, and Marshall, Texas, where additional guesthouses are plentiful. READ About Caddo Lake State Park.

We’ve created a dedicated website about the event. MadBarnstorming.com
please share!

SPACE IS LIMITED. Please reserve your seat early. You can hold your spot with a nonrefundable $50 deposit.

The photo gallery below shows pictures from a couple of different trips Kim took to Caddo Lake. Most of these photos are by John R. Fortune, who is pictured here alongside the text he contributed heavily to, The Northeast Corner of Harrison County, Texas. John will be our contact person in the region. Kim is pictured at Johnson’s Ranch, in Uncertain, Texas, on a sunrise boat ride, and at the railway museum in Marshall, Texas. The mosaic art and the art cars are all around Spatterdock.

Faculty

We have three authors who have all published in multiple genres, poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, popular and literary. All three are professors who also have experience with the business of publishing and
getting published. These are the initial subjects they have suggested speaking about, but we will be
somewhat fluid here and attendees can expect the really rich conversations to happen around the fire pit in
the evenings.

Kerry Neville: “Writing Truth, Writing True: Writing Short (But Not Shortsighted) Meditative Essays”

Michael Simms: “Dragons, vampires and detectives: why genre fiction?”

Gerry LaFemina: “The Poetic Line: Finding Best Words and Best Order”

$995 stay on-site
(we can accommodate 12)

$495 for workshops & meals only
(There are guest houses and cabins near Spatterdock.)

Posted on October 12, 2023October 13, 2023 by Kimberly Davis

Fantastic Imaginary Creatures

An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina

2023 Acceptances Announced

Anthology publication planned for Spring 2024.

This is the call Gerry LaFemina put out for this anthology:

The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures seeks to collect the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows, previously published or brand spanking new. We’re not looking for short short stories, but rather work that explores the liminal space between story and lyric, the luminous spark of possibility in the form.

And of the many fine poets who answered Gerry’s call, these are the poets and the poems Gerry selected:

Valerie Bacharach	“Momento Mori”
Ujjvala Bagal-Rahn	“Just Enough House”
Ned Balbo	“O Christmas Tree,” and “That Which We Discard We Also Cherish”
Madeleine Barnes	“Key Rock,” and “Self Portrait in My Mother’s Closing Lines”
Michelle Boczek Evory	“Absolution,” and “Dislocation”
Rick Campbell	“Parable of the Forest Pygmy,” and “Forgetting the Nicene Creed”
Joseph Capista	“Room for Error,” “Myth,” and “Song”
Gary Ciocco	“Being and Becoming”
TS Coody	“Mimesis”
Jim Daniels	“With Apologies to the Tom Tom Club,” and “At Last”
Anthony DiMatteo	“Every Time”
gary fincke	“The Hands”
Jeff Friedman	“Giver of Gifts,” “Terrorists,” and “Lost Memory”
Molly Fuller	“Home Again, Home Again,” and “Tale of the Flopsy Bunny”
Joy Gaines-Friedler	“Daffodils,” “Act 20:14,” “Traveling with the Band,” and “The Children’s Ward”
George Guida	“Trip Wire,” and “The story of a Life”
Luke Hankins	“A Voice out of the Ruins”
Gretchen Heyer	“Pasiphae Answers Questions,” “Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God,” and “Jute, Two Inches in Diameter”
Tom Hunley	“My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)” and “Questions for Further Study”
Anna Jacobson	“This is to That”
Peter Johnson	“Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term,” “Crickets,” and “Nice Socks”
Richard Jordan	“Jesus in the Café,” “With Feathers,” and “Mackerel Day”
Elizabeth Kerlikowske	“At 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole,” and “Tabula Rasa”
Nina Kossman	“Kharkiv”
Gerry LaFemina	“Fantastic Imaginary Creatures,” “Happy Pigs,” and “Bad Medicine”
Joseph Lerner	“The Black Egret”
Geri Lipschultz	“Aphrodite in Manhattan”
Lorette C. Luzajic	“Feathers,” and “January River”
Gary McDowell	“Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy,” and “Another Apocalypse”
Kathleen McGookey	“Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet”
Jennifer Militello	“Identifying the Pathogen,” “Dear B,” and “Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis”
Robert Miltner	“Wolf Dancing,” and “Hopeless”
Erin Murphy	“Ekphrasis,” “Gerunding,” and “Hula Dancer”
kerry neville	“Decade”
Robert Perchan	“The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers,” “At Home with Marlboro Jones,” and “The Orgun Box Junkies”
Christine Rhein	“Drone Pilot,” and “Sunday Night Retail”
Jane Satterfield	“Latin 121,” and “Abbreviated Inventory”
Katherine Smith	“Crossword,” and “Quilt”
Joshua Michael Stewart	“Yellow,” and “Book of Love”
Virgil Suárez	“Chinese Weather Balloon”
Matthew Thorburn	“A Hundred Birds,” and “How it Starts”
Eric Torgersen	“My Blindness”
Patricia Valdata	“Mayfly”
Doug Van Gundy	“Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975,” and “To Join the Circus”
Elinor Ann Walker	“Object Impermanence,” and “Fugue State”
Greg Watson	“Why I Live in a Cold Climate”
Cathy Wittmeyer	“Max Beckmann, Still Life with Fallen Candles, oil on canvas, 1929,” and “Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, etching & drypoint, 1924”
George Yatchisin	“Leap Year”
Michael T. Young	“Quoting Blake to Mother,” and “Sweaty Palms”

About the editor, Gerry LaFemina

Gerry LaFemina’s flash creative nonfiction essay collection, The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness, came out in 2022. His poetry collections include Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping, The Story of Ash and Little Heretic. His essays on prosody, Palpable Magic, came out in 2015 and Kendall Hunt recently released his textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.